Introduction


I am a lecturer in the Department of Informatics at King's College London, and am part of the Planning Group at King's. My research interests lie in the area of AI planning, I am particularly interested in hybrid systems planning (planning with discrete and continuous numeric change); the optimisation of plans to satisfy preferences (soft constraints) and generating plans of high utility in situations with limited resources. I have a strong interest in the application of AI planning to real world problems, and as such have also developed techniques for reasoning with highly expressive world models, including reasoning about continuous numeric resources. I am currently principal investigator on the EPSRC funded project "AI Planning with Continuous Non-Linear Change" (EP/P008410/1) and co-investigator on the European Comission project ERGO (European Robotic Goal-Oriented autonomous controller).

From April 2010 to April 2013 I held an EPSRC Post Doctoral Research Fellowship (EP/H029001/1) to research planning in problems with continuous numeric change, where there is uncertainty about the resource consumption and duration of actions. My work on planning with continuous numeric resources, began as part and earlier EPSRC project (EP/D062721/1) at the University of Strathclyde.

Recent major contributions of my work include development of the planners: Colin, capable of reasoning with continuous numeric change; LPRPG, discrete numeric change using an LP to perform complex numerical reasoning; and LPRPG-P an extension of LPRPG making use of the LP as an optimisation tool to create plans satisfying preferences. The planner POPF, which extends Colin to allow partial commitment in forward search temporal planning, is the most recent success having been awarded the runner up prize in the temporal track of the 2011 International Planning Competition. POPF was the only planner in this competition to support the full range of temporally expressive planning problems.

Temporal and numeric reasoning is vital in allowing planning to be applied to real world problems, which contain much of this type of structure: charge in Martian Rovers, Fuel in Logistics and Power Demand in Electricity supply. My research interests therefore extend to application of planning to real-world tasks, and through this I have been involved in developing VOLTS in conjunction with the Department for Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. VOLTS is a system for asset management based on the Grendon Substation, part of the UK's National Grid, near London. I have also been involved in work with Rune Moller Jensen and Kevin Tierney of ITU Copenhagen on automated planning of ocean-liner repositioning for the shipping company MAERSK.

If you are looking for Amanda Smith, that's me, I got married in June 2008.

Professional Activities


Senior Programme Committee Memberships

  • 22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 16)
  • 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 13)
  • 26th, 24th, 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 17, 15, 11)

Programme Committee Memberships

  • 25th, 23rd, 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 16, 13, 09)
  • 29th, 28th, 27th, 26th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 15, 14, 13, 12)
  • 21st, 20th, 19th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 14, 12, 10)
  • 27th, 25th, 24th, 22nd, 21st, 20th, 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 17, 15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 09)
  • 32nd, 30th, 29th, 28th, 27th Workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group (PlanSIG 14, 12, 11, 10, 08)

Event Organisation

Editorial Board Memberships

  • Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
Reviewer for
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Journal of Scheduling (JOSH)
  • Knowledge Engineering Review (KER)
  • AI Communcations

Students and Post-Docs

Adam Green, PhD Student (King's College London), "Combining AI Planning and Constraint Programming" (EP/P008410/1)
Elad Dennenberg, Post-Doc (King's College London), "AI Planning with Continuous Non-Linear Change" (EP/P008410/1)
Liana Marinescu, PhD Student (King's College London), Second Supervisor, Planning with Continuous and Discrete Uncertainty

Past Visiting Students

Christian Muise (Visiting from University of Toronto)Dead End detection in planning.
Giuseppe Turelli (Visiting from University of Brescia) Investigating the use of preferences in LPRPG/LPG.

Employment


  • September 2018 - Present, King's College London: Senior Lecturer
  • April 2013 - August 2018, King's College London: Lecturer
  • November 2011 - April 2013, King's College London: EPSRC Post Doctoral Research Fellowship "Maximising Efficiency of Resource Usage Under Uncertainty in AI Planning"
    • EP/H029001/1
  • April 2010 - October 2011, University of Strathclyde: EPSRC Post Doctoral Research Fellowship "Maximising Efficiency of Resource Usage Under Uncertainty in AI Planning"
    • EP/H029001/1
  • December 2008 - March 2010, University of Strathclyde: Research Fellow, EPSRC project "Automated Modelling and Reformulation in Planning" EP/G023360/1
  • September 2006 - November 2008, University of Strathclyde: Research Fellow EPSRC project "Planning in Mixed Discrete-Continuous Domains" EP/D062721/1

Education


PhD in Artificial Intelligence Planning
Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde.
Start date: October 2003, thesis submission September 2006. Conferred July 2007.
My thesis, entitled "On The Inference and use of Macro-Actions in Forward Chaining Planning", can be found on my publications page

BSc (Hons) Artificial Intelligence, First Class
University of Durham
October 2000 to July 2003

Other Interests


Outside of work I coach gymnastics at St Albans and District Gymnastics Club and am also a qualified trampolining coach. I enjoy playing the piano.